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Solana sees chance for reviving Mideast peace talks Washington Post ... that can be moving in the right direction," after a year of no progress in the peace process, and an Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip. ... and more »

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us fights an information war in Afghanistan Los Angeles Times US military officials here complain that Taliban leaders are often better and faster at spreading their versions of deadly events. ... and more »

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Twitter, Facebook and other social networking tools have been a factor in election campaigns around the world. Now it’s Iran’s turn: Supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the main opponent of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are going online to organize for Friday’s elections in Iran.

Facebook is emerging as a particularly important campaign tool. As Elham Khatami of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports, Facebook has become a way to circumvent state-run media, which tends to favor the incumbent administration. Mousavi now counts over 36,000 Facebook friends, a network that could prove a potent way to mobilize voters under 30, who make up around half of the electorate. His supporters have also created a Twitter page and a YouTube channel.

Not surprisingly, the authorities briefly blocked both Facebook and Twitter last month. But elections, in the end, may not be decided by Facebook friends or Twitter followers: As the New York Times reports, pocketbook issues have dominated the election campaign in a country that faces high unemployment rates and rising inflation.

Nonetheless, a win for Mousavi could have major implications for the region. Mousavi, a former prime minister running on a reformist platform, has accused Ahmadinejad of isolating Iran through his belligerent rhetoric and his hard line on Iran’s nuclear policy. (Ahmadinejad, in turn, has accused his rivals were using “Hitler’s methods” to defame his character. Pot-kettle-black, Mahmoud.) We’re not in any position to call the election, but U.S. policy in both Iraq and Afghanistan could get a serious boost from a more reform-minded and less confrontational administration in Tehran.

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The Army has ordered its network managers to give soldiers access to social media sites like Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter, Danger Room has learned. That move reverses a years-long trend of blocking the web 2.0 locales on military networks.

Army public affairs managers have worked hard to share the service’s stories through social sites like Flickr, Delicious and Vimeo. Links to those sites featured prominently on the Army.mil homepage. The Army carefully nurtured a Facebook group tens of thousands strong, and posted more than 4,100 photos to a Flickr account. Yet the people presumably most interested in these sites — the troops — were prevented from seeing the material. Many Army bases banned access to the social networks.

An operations order from the Army’s 93rd Signal Brigade to all domestic Directors of Information Management, or DOIMs, aims to correct that. Issued on May 18th “for official use only,” the document has not been made public until now.

It is “the intent of senior Army leaders to leverage social media as a medium to allow soldiers to ‘tell the Army story’ and to facilitate the dissemination of strategic, unclassified information,” says the order, obtained by Danger Room. Therefore, “the social media sites available from the Army homepage will be made accessible from all campus area networks. Additionally, all web-based email will be made accessible.”

The operations order (OPORD) doesn’t apply to all GI Bases overseas, or those run by the other armed services, which aren’t affected by the decree. Nor does the order overturn the long-standing, military-wide ban on sites like MySpace, YouTube and Pandora. And it’s almost certain some Army posts that still block the now-approved web 2.0 networks. Still, it’s a click in the right direction for the armed service which seems to be making a slow but steady recovery from its lingering hostility towards social media.

The full OPORD, after the jump.

FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY
COPY ____ OF ____ COPIES d HQS, 93 SIGNAL BRIGADE FORT EUSTIS, VA 23604
18 1500 May 09
OPORD 09-14, WEB FILTERING STANDARD

References:

a. Signal Command Theater, OPORD 09-01, 100 Day Plan b. FRAGO 2 TO SECTION 6.2 TO TAB C TO APPENDIX 2 TO ANNEX C TO ARMY NETOPS OPORD 05-01(U) c. JTF-GNO ODM 059-07, IAP ACL/Security Filter Update for 15MAY2007.

Task Organization. N/A.

1. SITUATION: The Army has recently made access to several social media websites available from the Army home page within the .mil domain.

Access to these sites or a subset of these sites is available from some installations across CONUS and restricted at others. Similarly, web-based email is available from some installations and restricted at others. IAW 7 th Signal Command Theater 100 Day Plan, and in an effort to establish a web filtering standard for DOIMs across CONUS, the 93d Signal Brigade Commander directs all DOIMs to allow access to specific social media sites and access to web-based email from their respective campus area networks.

2. MISSION: Permit access to specific social media websites and all web-based email from the installation campus area NIPR network NLT 22 May 09.

3. EXECUTION:

a. Concept of Operations: IOT support the intent of senior Army leaders to leverage social media as a medium to allow soldiers to “tell the Army story” and to facilitate the dissemination of strategic, unclassified information, the social media sites available from the Army homepage http://www.army.mil, will be made accessible from all campus area networks. Additionally, all web-based email will be made accessible from all campus area NIPR networks in the 93d AOR.

b. Task to subordinate Units.
(1) All DOIMs will modify their web filtering systems to allow access to
the following web sites NLT 22 MAY 09 :
(a) Facebook, http://www.facebook.com
(b) Delicious, http://www.delicious.com
(c) Flickr, http://www.flickr.com
(d) Twitter, http://www.twitter.com
(e) Vimeo, http://www.vimeo.com

OPORD 09-14, WEB FILTERING STANDARD 15 1700 May 09
(2) IAW JTF-GNO ODM 059-07, IAP ACL/Security Filter Update for 15MAY2007, The document can be found at:
https://www.jtfgno.mil/operations/odm/2007/ODM_059_07/ODM_059_07.doc

All DOIMs will block access to the following sites:
(a) YouTube, http://www.youtube.com
(b) 1.FM, http://www.1.fm
(c) Pandora, http://www.pandora.com
(d) Photobucket, http://www.photobucket.com
(e) MySpace, http://www.myspace.com
(f) Live365, http://www.live365.com
(g) hi5, http://www.hi5.com
(h) Metacafe, http://www.metacafe.com
(i) MTV, http://www.mtv.com
(j) BlackPlanet, http://www.blackplanet.com
(k) StupidVideos, http://www.stupidvideos.com
(l) Filecabi,http://www. filecabi.net.

(3) All DOIMs, be prepared to make the necessary modifications to their Blackberry servers to allow mobile applications of these sites accessible and functional once STIG compliance is verified.

(4) Notify 93d Signal Brigade, Current Operations once completed via email at XXXXXX@us.army.mil

(5) Exemptions for other social media sites will be submitted in RFI format to 93d Signal Brigade Current Operations section at (757) XXX-XXXX, DSN XXX-XXXX, or XXXXX@conus.army.mil.
c. Coordinating Instructions: The POC for this tasking is Mr. XXXXXXX, 93d Signal Brigade, (757) XXX-XXXX, DSN XXX-XXXX, XXXXXX@us.army.mil 4. SERVICE AND SUPORT: N/A 5. COMMAND AND SIGNAL: CPT XXXXXX 93 d SIG BDE S3, DSN: 826-2664, Commercial: (757) XXX-XXXX Email: XXXX@us.army.mil

ACKNOWLEDGE:
GARRISON
COL
OFFICIAL:
Kuntz
S3
DISTRIBUTION: All
FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

[Photo: DoD]

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Darpa, the Pentagon’s far-out science division, is known for beyond-the-bleeding-edge research into thinking machines and shapeshifting drones. But over the last five years, the agency has also given $10 million to New York City’s 140 year-old American Museum of Natural History, of all places. Thank a powerful and controversial lawmaker for this collaboration between a far-out military branch and an iconic institution best known for its display of mummies and dinosaur bones.

Every year, Congress orders federal agencies to spend billions of dollars in pet projects, or “earmarks.” Often, the connection between the departments and the programs they’ve been told to sponsor can be pretty tenuous. But rarely is the mismatch this pronounced. Not only is the Museum a relative stranger to Pentagon research, but the earmark’s recipient there confesses that “we don’t actually collaborate formally with the Department of Defense” on the $10 million project.

Since 2005, New York’s Rep. Charlie Rangel has tacked $2 million dollars per year onto Darpa’s budget for the Museum’s Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics. It’s one of three projects Rangel sponsors at the landmark museum on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The Institute isn’t known for its military expertise; instead, it studies the history of evolutionary biology and genetic adaptation. But with Rangel’s backing, the Institute has been working to create a predictive algorithm for modern pandemics, using data on how viral influenzas morph and spread. Last year, the researchers there published a Google Maps-like tool to visualize how Bird Flu became a worldwide terror. Institute Director George Amato says the organization applied for federal dollars because the project “can be applied to society as a whole, unlike other research we do.”

The Pentagon gets more of these pet projects than any other federal agency. In 2009, Defense Department earmarks comprised nearly 20 percent of the 11,000 projects tacked onto federal budgets, for a total of $6.6 billion. That’s about one percent of the massive annual price tag for the military. “Defense spending is a primary target for congressional pet projects,” says Laura Peterson, a senior policy analyst with Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Much of that money goes into science and technology programs; Peterson says that “research is the black hole… Lawmakers just pour money into these projects that we never seem to hear about again.” But Darpa has been able to keep itself from being force-fed that much pork. In 2009, Darpa got a relatively paltry nine earmarks. Lawmakers have requested seventeen projects, worth $42 million, for 2010. The biggest comes courtesy of Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye, who requested $10 million dollars for CEROS, the self-styled “National Defense Center of Excellence for Research in Ocean Sciences.” It funds projects in ocean technology, like shallow-water surveillance and underwater reconnaissance. Oklahoma State University also got a piece of the Darpa pie, to continue developing their National Repository of Digital Forensics Intelligence, an online database accessible to national law enforcement agencies. Other earmarks are more Darpa-friendly, like synthetic fuels, 3-D and remote sensor technologies and an “Explosively Formed Projectile Iron Curtain.”

Ordinarily, Darpa managers closely supervises its researchers, who have to meet strict performance goals - or risk getting their funding cut. Earmark recipients, on the other hand, are only accountable to their sponsoring lawmaker. So the agency doesn’t appear to be pay much attention to these Congressionally-mandated programs.

“We don’t actually collaborate formally with the Department of Defense, but we do think that our work is relevant to them,” says Amato. He runs regular meetings with public health professionals and evolutionary biologists, but the group only puts in a yearly phone call to a Darpa program officer.

Amato’s work at Darpa is backed by Rep. Rangel. He’s a decorated military veteran — he served in the Korean War, earning a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star – who in recent years has faced a different kind of fire, for alleged ethical indiscretions. In 2008, the longtime lawmaker from Harlem was investigated by the House Ethics Committee for failure to pay taxes on his beach rental in Punta Cana, living in rent-controlled apartments to save money, and using a federal parking garage as free storage for his Mercedes-Benz. (The results of that investigation have not been released.) Rangel continues to serve as chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee – the congressional overseer of tax law and ethics. And unlike other famous military earmarkers, like Rep. John Murtha, Rangel hasn’t been accused of collecting campaign contributions from his pet project beneficiaries.

(Neither Darpa nor Rangel’s office responded to invitations to comment on this article.)

The 2007 Federal Spending and Assistance Bill mandated that earmark recipients and project descriptions be listed in an online database. That same year, employees at 78 percent of the groups getting Defense Department earmarks had recently donated to congressional election campaigns. In January 2009, the House and Senate Appropriations Committee required lawmakers to disclose 2010 requests on their websites, making this year the first that reps are tied directly to their pork.

The 2007 transparency bill was a start, but there’s more we don’t know about federal earmarks. Unapproved requests aren’t made public, so Rangel and other lawmakers might have asked for, but not received, other funds for Darpa projects. And Peterson laments an absence of detailed information about where earmarked money ends up. “Accountability is minimal,” she says. “The money is handed from the government to these independent contractors, but after that, who knows?”

In March, Obama announced plans for earmark reform that would include competitive bidding for any private contracts, as well as hearings for lawmakers to publicly justify their requests. Peterson is optimistic that we’ll see fewer wasted dollars in the future. But because museums aren’t for-profit enterprises, Rangel’s friends at the American Museum of Natural History will probably still be spending Darpa cash.

The Institute relies on a small percentage of earmark funding, and Amato says most of their money comes from competitive grants and philanthropic donations. Still, they’ll keep requesting earmarks as long as Congress keeps handing them out. “Earmark is a dirty word, but we do our best to access money that’s out there, and hopefully prove what we can do with it.”

[Photo: AMNH]

– Katie Drummond and Noah Shachtman

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Watch Travis County constable Richard McCain explain the incident, and the whole thing sounds reasonable: The driver was speeding through a construction zone, and disobeyed the deputy’s orders when she got pulled over. So, eventually, the cop zapped her with a Taser.

But then you watch the video of what went down on that strip of Texas highway. And suddenly, the claims of the driver “refusing to move” and getting “violent” suddenly seem ridiculous. Because the driver is a 72 year-old great grandmother who barely makes it up to the cop’s chest. Take a look:

Used right, the Taser stun guns save lives — disabling targets, instead of shooting them dead. But law enforcement officials don’t always use the shock weapons as firearm substitute. Tasers are also employed in all kinds of situations in which an officer would never even consider pulling out his weapon. Old ladies get blasted, as a result.

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